All posts by Alex Ferri

You might say that the genre is still going strong with the success of games like Terraria, Minecraft or Telltale’s The Walking Dead. But when there’s a wiki site for every game with all its secrets just a few keystrokes away, mystery and discovery fall victim to efficiency and power gaming.

A video game used to force you to use your brain; now, you can just use Google. It feels like cheating.

Organized crime is glamorous. While the exploits of a petty thief might not be admirable, there is a certain appeal to the life of a seasoned criminal.

An ordinary person will likely go their whole life without robbing a bank or transporting cocaine. But that doesn’t mean that person can’t feel some of the rush that comes with pulling off a successful heist. That’s the escapist nature a video game: it lets people act out wild fantasies.

Payday 2 lets players live out their organized crime fantasies with a variety of underworld undertakings, ranging from art theft to gun running. It’s all of the fun of robbing a bank with none of the lengthy federal prison sentence.

As the massive success of Call of Duty and similar titles shows, war is a popular theme in video games.

So much so that video games and war have become linked in many people’s minds. They go together like… war and video games.

While there are definitely other popular genres, a stereotype has grown around games that says they’re all about killing.

Is that what’s so appealing about war games?

In truth, war has shaped the human race. Our history as a species is defined by it in many ways–but not entirely.

While war has its place in games just as it does in human history, other themes are needed too.

Previously, Civilization 5 was a war game. Of course, there were alternative routes to victory, but it ultimately came down to who had the biggest army at the end of a match.

Maybe that’s clever commentary on reality, but Brave New World changed this dynamic by introducing more diplomacy and trade features. In essence, it made Civilization 5 less of a war simulator and more of a world simulator.

They say subtlety is dead. When it comes to video games, there’s evidence to support such a claim—just look at the success of titles like Call of Duty, Halo and Borderlands. While I love going on a testosterone-fueled rampage just as much as the next dude, it’s also nice to play some games with a different play style.